I'm having drinks and thinking how many of the Ontario slow pitch provincials seem to have less teams every year.

I'm thinking a way to ensure more teams can play and enjoy post season ball with their friends or even the odd local tournament if they adopt a rating system like some European pro hockey league's rate their players instead of letter rankings players are ranked by #.

So if you have a team in C
2 A Players = 10 points
1 B player = 5 points
6 C players = 18 Points
2 D player = 4 points

Total points = 37 points

I think this could draw more teams as more league teams could play with their buddies and enjoy the sport with buddies.

blueoveryou

12-30-2017 06:35 PM

It makes sense to me. It is clear enough for people to understand easily, and the division point thresholds can be adjusted very easily if they think one division is too strict/lenient.

kvander

12-30-2017 06:42 PM

How would people be assigned the rating?

stratty5

12-30-2017 07:53 PM

And what happens when an A player goes middle on a D pitcher? It happens and as tension and games have more meaning there is nothing to stop it.

BigHurt23

12-30-2017 07:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by stratty5
(Post 1219458)

And what happens when an A player goes middle on a D pitcher? It happens and as tension and games have more meaning there is nothing to stop it.

Majority of A players go glove hand or barehand side when they go middle they donít actually try and hit it at the pitcher

stratty5

12-30-2017 08:30 PM

The majority? That doesn't sound assuring. I pitched one double header in Hamilton against a team of A players well known on here and was hit in the legs on the first pitch of the game. Was there a history yes, was i involved no. My point is it happens even in meaningless games so the safety of players will be a constant concern in this format.

TMAC68

12-30-2017 09:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by stratty5
(Post 1219461)

The majority? That doesn't sound assuring. I pitched one double header in Hamilton against a team of A players well known on here and was hit in the legs on the first pitch of the game. Was there a history yes, was i involved no. My point is it happens even in meaningless games so the safety of players will be a constant concern in this format.

Very accurate post bobby!
Iíd be using screens in my setup around here if I were to mimic this setup (which Gmac came up with a while ago and Iíve always loved)

shmoo

01-02-2018 02:54 PM

Associations don't want to work together on a ranking system (officially, but off the record they have talked together)

Associations wouldn't want to release the power of ranking players to the players, even if they have already volunteered to manage a database for the associations to use

And as most tournaments / organization of tournaments & events is almost voluntary as it is. Adding more work may discourage the support that the organizations have come to rely on to have tournaments / events happen

Gary Mac

01-12-2018 04:37 PM

I believe this is the basis of a great system, and I put the wheels in (slow) motion a while ago.

It may be time to stop procrastinating and get this thing done.

The key to this is to remain flexible. Players come into the system with a rating number based on their recent divisional history, but then you allow for everyone's number to adjust up and down based on factual results.

Over time, everyone's number is fair, because it's based on how competitive they've been in the recent past.

Someone ranked B may or may not have a significant impact on a D game, but we can play the games, record the results, and adjust accordingly.

gt51

01-12-2018 06:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gary Mac
(Post 1219826)

I believe this is the basis of a great system, and I put the wheels in (slow) motion a while ago.

It may be time to stop procrastinating and get this thing done.

The key to this is to remain flexible. Players come into the system with a rating number based on their recent divisional history, but then you allow for everyone's number to adjust up and down based on factual results.

Over time, everyone's number is fair, because it's based on how competitive they've been in the recent past.

Someone ranked B may or may not have a significant impact on a D game, but we can play the games, record the results, and adjust accordingly.

Great points, and great idea, but your idea would require a dedicated "stats" guy and central online record keeper/platform to keep track of everything over a long period of time.

blueoveryou

01-13-2018 06:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gt51
(Post 1219831)

Great points, and great idea, but your idea would require a dedicated "stats" guy and central online record keeper/platform to keep track of everything over a long period of time.

I don't think this is unreasonable. For example, if every single game from every league/tourney reported their results to an app like Game on Mobile, then a system could store and aggregate this data set. If we did not keep individual player stats, then the database size would stay relatively small. It's actually a fairly simple problem to solve technologically, especially considering all leagues and some tourneys already store their results electronically somewhere. Politics and buy-in... that's a different story :doh:

The harder questions are developing the algorithm to sort and adjust players into appropriate rankings. But if you fed enough data over a long enough period of time, then your ranking system would get continuously better.